Online course
10. Bulking Sludge
Bulking sludge is a phenomenon in wastewater treatment that continuously attracts the attention of wastewater treatment practitioners and scientists. In this interesting course, you will learn about the relationship between morphology and ecopsychology following the microbiological and morphological-ecological approaches. You will familiarize yourself with the filamentous bacteria identification and characterization, general theories to explain bulking sludge (diffusion-based selection, kinetic selection, and storage selection). Remedial actions such as aerobic, non-aerated, anoxic and anaerobic selectors are also part of the course. Finally, you will understand the basic principles of mathematical modelling of filamentous bulking and you will have the opportunity to embark on examples and exercises complemented with selected case studies. By the end of the course, you will have an in-depth understanding of the bulking sludge phenomenon in activated sludge systems.
Course information
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Learning Objectives
After completion of the course you should be able to:
- understand the relationship between morphology and ecopsychology following the microbiological and morphological-ecological approaches
- familiarize with the filamentous bacteria identification and characterization, and general theories to explain bulking sludge (diffusion-based selection, kinetic selection, and storage selection).
- understand the role of aerobic, non-aerated, anoxic and anaerobic selectors
- grasp the basic principles of mathematical modelling of filamentous bulking
- understand the basics of bulking sludge microbiology
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Syllabus
This course covers the following topics:
- General introduction
- Laboratory investigations
- Practical implications
- Microbiology of bulking sludge
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Delivery method
This course is currently designed for a SELF-STUDY mode. It is FREE and does not include guidance, support, exams, assessment, and certification. It is possible that shortly, the series (or its parts) will be adopted by institutions who may deliver the guided version, including certification. As soon as this is the case, it will be advertised on this website.
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Organization
Courses in this series consist of video lectures, presentation slides, reading materials, exercises, and assignments with solutions. In principle, each video presentation has its complementary presentation slides. All videos are available for viewing in the section “Video-recorded presentations”. The materials are packaged in three (.zip) files, namely, the “Videos”, the “Presentations”, and the “Documents”. Files may be of considerable size, so you need to ensure that your computer has sufficient bandwidth and capacity for downloading. This course is based on the chapter in the book “Biological Wastewater Treatment: Principles, Modeling, and Design” 2nd edition (Chen et al., 2020). To check and expand your knowledge on the subject, it is recommended to study the corresponding chapter in the complementary book “Biological Wastewater Treatment: Examples and Exercises” (Lopez-Vazquez et al., 2023). The two chapters are open access and available in the section “Documents (.zip) on this webpage. For those interested in related experimental methods, it is advised to consult relevant methods in the book “Experimental Methods in Wastewater Treatment” (Van Loosdrecht et al., 2016). The complete book and video-recorded experimentation are available on this website as a separate course (https://studybwwt.online/courses/experimental-methods-in-wastewater-treatment/).
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Open Access
The content is available for free unlimited access and use, consistent with Global Sanitation Graduate School’s commitment to ensuring open access to information and knowledge. Please note that the video materials fall under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), presentations under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), readers (OA books of IWA Publishing) under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), and other readers under the license specified by the publisher. Although care has been taken to ensure the integrity and quality of these materials and information, no responsibility is assumed by the author(s), Global Sanitation Graduate School, or IHE Delft Institute for Water Education for any damage to property or persons as a result of the use of these materials and/or the information contained herein.